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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Life After Death (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 63. A Dramatic Illustration
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A Dramatic Illustration
It will be noticed that these passages all have to do with the present life. And we are talking about the future life. But these reveal God's habit in dealing with men. And at heart, this is a question about God. Will God be fair? In the common talk of the crowd, "will God play fair?"
These passages show how God does now. They do more. They show the principle that controls Him in his dealings. We see His unvarying insistence of man being free to choose. And they show the process that works out under that principle. Unless there are some specific statements in the Book regarding a change of principle and process we would naturally look for this treatment to continue beyond the grave. And, be it carefully noted, there are no such specific statements.
But, now, we turn to another sort of passage. It is the story of Pharaoh in Egypt. And it should be keenly noted that here God is dealing in judgment. That is, He is acting to settle-up long-standing wrongs, and to straighten them out.
The Hebrews had been wronged in the most grievous way for several generations. The Pharaohs had oppressed them with increasing heartless severity. There had been a long period of long-suffering by God toward the Pharaohs. Now a settlement time has come. That is what judgment, in principle, is.
There are now specific warnings and requests and pleadings with Pharaoh before action is taken finally. Then comes a carefully graduated series of transactions that constitute a visitation of judgments upon Egypt. They grow steadily from less to greater, from bad to worse. And there's always an interval between times to give Pharaoh opportunity to make the changes needed.
There is a significant word here. It seems to be used about nineteen times in a brief space. It's the word "harden," in varying forms. God says, "I will harden his (Pharaoh's) heart" (Exo_4:21; Exo_7:3; Exo_14:4; Exo_14:17). Nine times it says, with some variations, that He hardened Pharaoh's heart (Exo_7:13-14; Exo_7:22; Exo_9:12; Exo_9:35; Exo_10:20; Exo_10:27; Exo_11:10; Exo_14:8). And five times it says that Pharaoh hardened his heart, or was stuhborn (Exo_8:15; Exo_8:19; Exo_8:32; Exo_9:7; Exo_9:34).
That hardening was, and is, an unnatural thing, though so common. Man was created to live in touch with God. Out of that touch he is out of his native environment. And he doesn't act as he naturally would. Pharaoh had persistently shut God's pleadings with his inner heart, and God's presence, out. He cut himself off from that influence which would have made him act in a true human natural way. The result is expressed in this significant way. His heart was hardened or heavy. It was stubbornly set. And it says distinctly that he sinned in this very thing of hardening himself against God (Exo_9:34).
He had been doing this for long. Now the decision time has come. God purposes to let the Egyptians and the Hebrews and the world know directly of His rejected scorned power. He simply now withdraws some of the creative touch He has been keeping on Pharaoh. Some of his gracious restraint is withdrawn. That is all. He doesn't do anything except to stop, partly, what He has been doing.
The visitation of judgment runs through plagues or pests, disease, storms, the death of every Egyptian first-born son, and the drowning of the Egyptian army. In each case it is quite possible that the action came simply through the withdrawal of divine restraint. And every-thing of the sort in the Book favors the supposition that that was the way it did come.
In the case of the first-born dead there was nothing that the Egyptians could see that happened to kill their heirs. They simply knew that the babe or boy or young man was found lying dead in his bed.
In the case of the army drowning the wind blew back the waters. It was a special act of God's power on behalf of His people. He held the waters back. When they were safe, that power was withdrawn. The law of gravity pulled the waters back again. The Egyptians in their headstrong rage put themselves in danger. The danger materialized. The waters swamped them. The process was wholly a natural one.
Now, this is more than history. It is teaching, picture teaching. It's a triple picture. It's a picture of God's patience, the most marked trait of His character in the whole story. It's a picture of the obstinate headstrong stubborn will of a man, out of his native element, God's gracious presence. It's a picture of the principle and process in judgment.
There are certain apparent partial exceptions to this law of action. It seems like- arbitrary action on God's part in the flood that destroys the whole race, except eight persons; and in the terrific lightning-storm that wiped out Sodom and the other cities of the Plain.
But it is not at all clear that there was arbitrary action.. Ít is impossible to know. And if so, it extended simply to the time element involved. Sin left to itself burns itself out. There seems here simply a shortening of the time involved in the natural process.
And maybe not even that, for there may have been a patiently extended restraint that prevented disaster from coming earlier. Then the restraint withdrawn, nature's process worked out naturally, and maybe faster through the acceleration of long restraint withdrawn.
Let it be thoughtfully marked that God has hung up these and other danger signals in full view. The train I was on the other day ran by a large powder factory. And everywhere about the place I could read, even as we hurried by, the warnings in large letters against "matches" and the like. We ran by some out-buildings of the railroad company, with stringent warnings in plain view against inflammables because of the contents of these buildings.
God's danger signals are in big bold letters, hung up where all the race can read. The Dead Sea is a warning signal, known to all. It's the deepest ugliest scar on the earth's surface. No life can exist there, neither animal nor vegetable. It points out the fact of judgment on 'wrong.
But there's something closer by. Nature's common laws are inexorable, mercilessly inexorable, aye, because merciless therefore merciful, mercifully inexorable. The fire mercilessly burns your hand if you stick it in. Instantly you snatch it out. The pain mercifully leads you to keep your whole anti from the flame.
In contrast, man's laws are notoriously loose. And so the contagion of evil spreads. One murderer acquitted is followed by other murders. It never fails. Failure to uphold the dignity of law leads to a lowered moral tone in the community, inevitably. A king or a president, loose in his personal morality, always leads the crowd down the same incline. Nature's laws are merciful because they are so merciless. The warning signals are at hand everywhere.
This then traces the process of God's dealing with the man who sets himself against God. It is a process of patient strong love on God's part, and of reluctant witholding of what is being rejected. It is, a process of terrible de-gradation on man's part, gradation downwards.